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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Asklemmy
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Should we care about the states or the people in the states? There are less people in Rhode Island than California. Are those people so much more important that they get more representation, proportionally speaking?
People have locational representation in their local governments. Let them rule over themselves if you want, but don't give them disproportionate authority over the rest of us.
I understand that line of thinking, and you'd have a point if the senate could act alone. But the senate and the house have to agree on everything they pass, with very few exceptions. That means that the fact that Rhode Island gets an equal vote in the senate doesn't actually matter if the majority of the population doesn't want something anyway. In the same way that the majority population doesn't matter if the individual governments can't agree.
The people in Rhode Island don't matter as much as the people in California for sheer numbers, and that is already reflected in the house. Seeking to abolish the senate isn't an exercise in majority rule, it's just disenfranchising the minorities that exist.
Edit to directly answer your question:
We should care about both, given that we are a nation comprised of 51 smaller governments. It's asinine to assert that those governments don't matter on the federal scale. We have a system established already that cares about both. Axing the part of that system that keeps the most populous areas from getting everything they want is not the solution you think it is.
I chose to pose this hypothetical as a separate comment to better illustrate my point:
Why is it that proposing abolishing the senate only invokes the idea of stopping the minority from having authority over the majority and not the other way around? It needs to be said that the senate is just as much a check on the house as the house is the senate.
Let's say the house is the only voting body of the legislature. What is to stop them from imposing a 50% tax on all states under a certain population limit, paid directly to the other states? Obviously this benefits large swaths of the population, so their representatives vote unanimously yes. Now it doesn't matter how many representatives lower populated areas have because they will always be outnumbered.
So are you proposing that it's fair for extortion to take place in that manner? Because without an equal vote to be able to defend themselves on a more level playing field, you're inviting that kind of power imbalance.
Frankly, that's a ridiculous scenario. States are an artificial construct. There's no reason California couldn't be split into five states so they can get more senators, and there's no reason tiny east coast states couldn't be merged together. It's just a matter of political will. States rights do nothing to benefit the individuals living in those states. Often when we talk about states rights, states are imposing some kind of oppression or restriction on their citizens, abortion being the most recent example. The Supreme Court threw it back to the states, many of which banned it immediately.
The states don't matter! They're overgrown, glorified municipalities. If we are going to redesign the system, we need to reduce their power all together. States are a relic of a colonial system founded by the British, where each colony was individually granted a charter, and a of a constitution written at the same time the Holy Roman Empire was alive.
What stops ridiculous, punitive laws from being passed? What stops them from being passed now? The courts, for one, and the federal government. Often it's the states that are trigger happy in committing some kind of mayhem.
We've lived with states for so long that we've been gaslit into thinking that their existence is in our best interest. While states might be useful in some form, like in organizing regional infrastructure projects, their power should be diminished, and they are not deserving of house on par with the house of the people.
Of course, Congress is in need of other dire reforms as well. It should be bigger, for one, and first past the post should be replaced with some kind of alternate system (perhaps California-style jungle primaries?).
I believe the prompt was to reform the constitution, not the system. In case you forgot, or don't know, the states ratify the constitution. Not the other way around.
In a perfect world, sure. States need not be framed as rigid individual governments. In a scenario where the fed is overthrown and the states are intact, there's nothing stopping the states from just saying "nah, we'll form our own country".
Which if that's you're goal, I guess sure. The reason Texas hasn't done that already in the current system is that the federal government is there to stop them and they don't have the numbers.
I think your assumption in this thread is that the states already don't have power, which isn't even close to true. In the meantime ranting about how states are insignificant kind of comes off as missing the forest for the trees.
I will say that the irony of you calling a hypothetical that I made ridiculous, and then immediately presenting a more ridiculous scenario isn't lost on me. So thanks for that.
The prompt just says the revolution was successful and that now it's time for a new constitution. It's not even US-specific, so there's no reason to assume that state governments even exist in the context of the prompt, much less need to approve this new constitution. There's no need for such niceties if we're in a world where a revolution has destroyed the old regime in its entirety.